Employment and Skills in Financial Services: A Comparison Of Banks and Insurance Companies in Five OECD Countries

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, financial services remained among the fastest growing sectors in most OECD countries. Since the early 1980s however, the pace of employment growth in financial services has slowed in several countries. In a few of them, such as France, there even have been warnings by industry executives of subsranrial employment losses in the years ahead as result of both market saturation and large productivity increases due to the widespread diffusion of computerised technologies Le Monde, 1986]. A study recently completed by the authors for the OECD's Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (19871 arrives a conclusions that are at once more optimistic and more complex.